


A Book with a Thousand Covers

by Neeka



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Jesus has layers you guys, S8 finale addition, Solidarity, Talking, War Aftermath, pre daryl/jesus - Freeform, their thoughts about what happened at the very end of the finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 06:52:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14350203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neeka/pseuds/Neeka
Summary: In the aftermath of the war, Daryl and Jesus talk





	A Book with a Thousand Covers

“You ever sleep?”

To his credit, Paul didn’t even startle, he just looked down from his perch on top of the trailer, shooting him an odd half smile.

“Not if I can help it.”

Daryl looked out over the Hilltop. It was dark and quiet and peaceful; a far cry from what it had been for a long damn time. He’d woken up from a fitful sleep, creeping worry following him through quick, red flashes of dreams. Knowing he’d get no more sleep, not even wanting to chance it in fact, he’d gotten up and headed out for a smoke. It wasn’t until he passed Paul’s still made bed that he realised the other man mustn’t have slept at all. Should have known he’d be on the damn roof.

“Got space up there for two?”

Daryl wasn’t even sure why he asked really. He’d gone outside to be alone, to smoke the night away and stew in worry and half baked thoughts. But something about seeing Paul up on his roof, legs crossed beneath him and staring over Hilltop like a fucking gargoyle, made him want to join him.

“Sure, why not.”

Paul stared at him without saying more, a slight grin on his face. Daryl knew what he was waiting for but he refused to give in. There was no fucking way he was admitting he didn’t know how to get on the roof.

Well no, he certainly knew a way; the table inside with a chair stacked on it, but Daryl refused to pick the easy way. Paul could climb up and down three story buildings like a damn monkey and a trailer wouldn’t even make him think twice. Daryl would figure out how he got up and do it that way. Probably with a lot more noise but he’d damn well manage.

He looked the front of the trailer over; he was tall but he still couldn’t reach the ledge, he’d have to jump. But then of course, the walls were too slippy to really get a grip with his boots so he’d have to rely on his arms. Normally that’d be no problem but the bullet wound still caused him some trouble.

“You can use the table inside you know?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

Paul let out a low chuckle, finally relaxing from the stiff pose he’d been sat in. He leaned forward and pointed to a water drum at the back end of the trailer.

“Stand on that, then the windowsill, then pull yourself up.”

With a sigh and a glare, Daryl walked over to the water drum, standing on top and ignoring it’s creaking, then the windowsill before he grabbed the top of the trailer. With a grunt, he jumped up from the window and tried to use the momentum to push himself up.

A sharp pain shot through his shoulder but just before he thought he was going to fall back onto his ass, a strong hand grabbed his good arm. Together, they managed to get Daryl on the roof, Paul sitting back on his haunches as Daryl rubbed his shoulder and waited for the inevitable smarmy comment.

“Your shoulder still bothering you?”

He looked up at Paul’s tone, seeing nothing but concern there, not even the slightest hint of a smirk. Huh.

“A bit.”

It was more than a bit; Daryl was pretty sure the adrenaline of everything and the fact he didn’t have to lift it higher than he needed to hold a gun or his bow was the only thing that stopped it being startlingly obvious it wasn’t healing well. And from the look on Paul’s face, he knew it too.

“I found some anti-inflammatory gel a while back, think it’s still in the trailer somewhere. I would have suggested heading to Carson to figure out some physical therapy but, well.”

He looked sad for a second, looking back out to Hilltop. Daryl had noticed that while Paul knew everyone and everyone knew him, he didn’t seem to have many friends. He was pretty sure Carson was one of them though or close enough. Until Paul had just spoken, Daryl had actually forgotten the doctor was killed.

Paul shook it off and looked back at Daryl. “I could help if you like? I screwed up enough joints before and after the Turn to be able to work something out.”

That probably would be useful. In fact, it was definitely getting past the point of useful and into the realms of very, very needed. But Paul’s easy smile and the thought of him putting his hands on him made Daryl’s stomach swoop, though he wasn’t quite sure why. Was good to know the offer was there though.

“Maybe.”

Paul smiled again, nodding easily and looking back out over Hilltop. He seemed so peaceful, so at ease on first glance, but Daryl knew something else was going on underneath all that. He kept subtly glancing all over Hilltop and after a few times watching, Daryl figured out the pattern.

Gate, Barrington, medical trailer, regular trailers in sight and back to the gate again.

Seemed like Daryl wasn’t the only one having trouble letting go of the feeling of imminent danger, the urge in the back of his mind to check on his people.

Daryl’s people were all split up now though. They had been for a while of course, but it’d only felt like an issue of geography. Now they were split up in a very different way, something not so quickly amended. The stretch of future in front of him felt as uneasy and unknowable as ever but Daryl was now torn between the people he was loyal to. And honestly, he’d never expected Paul ‘Jesus’ Rovia to be on the same side as him.

“Never thought you’d go in for this sorta thing. With Maggie. Thought you’d be preaching forgiveness and shit.”

Paul just huffed out a small, bitter sounding laugh. “Guess I’m more complicated than you thought Daryl. Don’t judge a book by its cover and all that.”

Daryl wasn’t quite sure what to say to that or what to make of his tone. He had a feeling he’d offended Paul, or at least confirmed something nasty he was already thinking. Normally Daryl couldn’t give a shit if something he’d said offended somebody, but the thought of doing that to Paul just wasn’t sitting well with him.

“Not tryin’ to be a dick,” he murmured. “Just thought after gettin’ them Saviours to surrender and saving them, that’s what you thought was right. Heard you with Morgan too, tellin’ him he didn’t need to kill.”

Paul finally turned away from Hilltop and stared at him, voice patient as he explained.

“I told Morgan not to kill, or to at least try another way, because that’s what he needed to hear. He’s been self destructing and spiralling down into someone he isn’t and doesn’t want to be. He’s obviously been through some things that have messed with his head and he couldn’t restrain himself. Morgan needed someone to tell him to stop, to _make_ him stop back in the forest when we were bringing back the prisoners. And it needed to be someone he couldn’t kill if it set him off.”

Daryl had heard something went off in the woods between Morgan and Paul, Tara had been spitting venom about it to anyone who’d listen, but Daryl hadn’t known it was that bad. He was about to ask for the whole story, something unsettled in the pit of his stomach but Paul carried on too quick.

“Then before the fight, he needed another option, a solid, concrete idea that’d stick in his mind once the killing started. Like programming. Showing him which end was for the dead and which was for the living gave him something visual that would stick in his mind; a small, easy set of rules to follow. It worked.”

Well. Fuck.

“You got a twisty mind, ya know that?”

For a second, Paul did nothing and Daryl was sure he’d managed to offend him again. Then he relaxed, a proper grin settling onto his face.

“It may have been pointed out before, yes.”

They sat in silence for a bit, the quiet only interrupted by the night animals and the occasional hint of talk brought on the breeze from the people on watch. It was calm, Daryl _could_ just be quiet, just take a moment to breath. But he couldn’t settle until he knew Paul’s thoughts on it all; why he was siding with them, why he was willing to back him and Maggie up, if he could really live with plotting to kill an unarmed prisoner.

“Are- are ya sure you’re okay killin’ Negan though? Or helping Maggie do it? He’s a fuckin’ prisoner now, so were them Saviours you brought back. Ya sure you’d be alright with that?”

“Honestly, am I the only fucking person here who knows how to judge on a person by person basis? It doesn’t have to be ‘kill everyone’ all the time or ‘kill no one’ all the time!”

Daryl had to admit, Paul had a point there.

“Look,” Paul turned back to Daryl once again, face serious and solemn. “I wanted the Saviours to surrender because I really believed we could take that place without wholesale slaughter. Was I prepared to kill them all if there was no other choice? Yes. But I was still going to try. Because I had no idea which people were there out of total belief in Negan and his cause, which just followed along because it was easier and safer or which ones were forced into it, blackmailed into it, fucking _tortured_ into it!”

Daryl couldn’t help but twitch at that, Paul instantly calming down when he saw it. In the back of his head, he knew there were people working for Negan who’d started off like he had in that cell. He _knew_ that but at the time he just wanted everyone who called themselves a Saviour to fucking pay.

It was easier to tar them all with the same brush than slow down long enough to see the people he was fighting weren’t all black or white. He was too fucking exhausted and too fucking hurt to see otherwise. It would have killed him. In the end, Daryl was glad that there was someone like Paul doing that thinking for all of them.

“I didn’t know with them okay?” Paul continued, softer but just as convicted. “I wanted to give them the choice, for them to show themselves for who they really were, good or bad. Some would be freed by their response to that choice, some doomed. Some on the fence might realise they could be better, be more than they were with Negan. I looked at those Saviours, those _people_ and saw potential.”

In a matter of seconds, Paul’s face went from open and kind to downright dark, voice loosing all of its warmth.

“Negan? All I see in Negan is a twisted, pathetic, dangerous piece of shit who deserves to die for what he did and for what he’d continue to do.”

Daryl couldn’t argue with that in the slightest so he just nodded. Seemed like Paul had it all square in his head, as surprising as that decision was.

“Dya think Maggie will regret it in the end? Goin’ against Rick and Michonne’s decision? Killing Negan?”

Daryl’s question wasn’t an interrogation, he simply wanted to get Paul’s opinion on Maggie’s state of mind. When Paul became someone who’s insight Daryl valued, he’d never know, but there was an undeniable desire to talk it all over with him.

“I think she deserves the chance to do what she feels is right here. I argued for her not killing the Saviour POW’s because I knew once everything settled down, she’d start thinking like I did. She’d wonder who they were or why they were there, then she’d start second guessing but it’d be too late. Again, with Negan there’s no chance of that. He killed her husband and her friend, right in front of her. I agree with Rick that things need to change, that the killing needed to stop. But it shouldn’t have stopped before Negan.”

Daryl couldn’t have agreed more and although Paul’s stance had been surprising at first, he’d obviously thought hard on it and believed strongly in it.

“What about you then Daryl?” Paul asked after a moment. “Are you okay going against Rick’s wishes? Michonne’s too?”

“Like you said, Maggie deserved that. She deserved to see Negan dead, to know he didn’ still get to be eatin’ and breathin’ in a world she’s trying to raise her kid in. The kid of the guy he fuckin’ killed right in front of her! Rick, he’s my brother, better than any of my own blood but he’s wrong. I get what he’s tryin’ to do, just ain’t right for it to be with Negan.”

Paul nodded, eyes flitting back to their well trodden path around Hilltop. “Guess all we can do is help Maggie. Do what we think is right and try to minimise any fallout. She’d never want to hurt Rick or Michonne, you know that better than I do, but I just don’t want her to say or do anything she’d regret. Wrong or not, they’re still her family.”

“Don’t wanna hurt them either, it ain’t about that. Rick’s just lost his kid, he ain’t in his right mind. Makes sense to him, it was what Carl wanted. But if Negan had killed Carl or Michonne, he’d have skinned that fucker slowly no matter what anyone said. Ain’t fair that he’s denying Maggie something he’d have done.”

And wasn’t that the kicker, the real thing that was sticking in Daryl’s head and grinding his gears. He’d never judge Rick, especially not in how he chose to deal with the death of Carl, but he just couldn’t get over the hypocrisy of it. Carl died because he was doing something good, he was helping someone. Yeah, he might not have been in that situation if the whole thing with Negan hadn’t happened, but at the same time, it was something totally separate to the war.

Maggie had to watch her husband, the father of her child, be murdered _brutally_ in front of her. Her last image of Glenn alive was of his head split open, trying desperately to tell her he’d find her, he’d still be with her. It wasn’t peaceful and she couldn’t say goodbye. She couldn’t even hold his fucking hand.

Rick got all that and he certainly didn’t have to deal with the fact that the man who did it with his own two hands, was safe and fed and _alive_ in a place both she and her husband had called home. For fucks sake, the cell was only two houses down from where she’d lived with Glenn! She would never be able to set foot in Alexandria again.

“Hey, it’s alright. We’ll get him okay? She won’t have to live knowing he does too. We won’t stop unless she tells us to.”

Daryl hadn’t noticed how tight he was clenching his fist or his jaw, but Paul did. He always seemed to notice. It was strange but since they first met, Paul always seemed to be around, always watching and what was stranger, Daryl always found his eyes drawn to him as much as Paul’s did. And now, after everything they’d been through, he felt a kinship with someone he hadn’t felt in a long time, the two of them sat on that roof and looking over Hilltop, planning and promising that someone they both cared about would be safe and at peace.

“You plannin’ on sleeping at all tonight?”

Paul shook his head in response. Daryl probably should have insisted that he did, he knew Paul had barely slept a few hours for the last few days at most, but something on his face made him hold his tongue. If Paul didn’t want to face whatever unpleasantness sleep brought him, or was unwilling to relinquish his post looking over Hilltop, who was Daryl to tell him otherwise.

“What about you then? You don’t have to keep me company you know?”

Daryl scoffed, heart suddenly racing at Paul’s soft, fond expression. “Ain’t sleeping but i’m sure as shit not stayin’ up for you. Ya just happened to be here so might as well stay.”

Paul grinned and Daryl felt his face heat up. Stupid prick and his stupid face.

“Well then since we both just _happen_ to be awake and just _happen_ to be occupying the same space, do you want a drink? Got flat beer or whisky, pick your poison.”

Drinking on a roof all night with a smarmy little shit, what could go wrong?

“Whisky. Thanks.”

“Did I just get a thanks from Daryl Dixon? Holy shit, I better mark this down!”

“Fuck you.”

Despite his words, Daryl couldn’t help the small smile he ducked his head to hide. Despite the uncertain future and the hurt he still felt, sat on the roof with Paul made him feel a lightness he hadn’t experienced in a long while. He wasn’t sure why but for the moment, Daryl didn’t care to examine it. For once, he’d just let it be; feel it instead of push it away because he didn’t deserve it or was worried what would happen.

If his small smile widened to a grin when Paul dramatically front flipped off the roof and landed perfectly on the ground, well, no one else was around to see it.

“Fuckin’ show off!”

The quiet laugh he got in response as Paul entered the trailer warmed something in him. He was right, what he said earlier; Paul was indeed a complicated person. From day one, he’d shown a hundred different sides of himself, all as inexplicably interesting to Daryl as the last.

It was comforting to know he had someone like that on his side, watching his back as well as Maggie’s. For that alone, Paul had Daryl’s thanks, but whatever it was that he felt when he looked at him or spoke to him didn’t just seem like thanks. It made him nervous sure, but not in the ‘imminent danger’ sort of way. Whatever it was, it was new.

Daryl was interrupted from his thoughts by Paul exiting his trailer, whisky bottle in hand and managing to climb up the trailer in the most elaborate, convoluted, _unnecessary_ way possible, all whilst one-handed. The utter ridiculousness of it made him chuckle and it was with a shock of surprise that Daryl realised it was the first time he’d laughed in a long time.

The rest of the night was spent splitting the whisky, passing the bottle back a forth and chatting softly. It was easy, simple; the conversation flowed when they talked or trickled off into comfortable silence.

When the dawn came, they were both slightly drunk, sat so close together Daryl could feel the warmth all along one side of him. They said nothing as the sun rose, just enjoyed the feeling of not being alone. Whatever the future held, Daryl found himself hoping there’d be more nights like that, more of that new, unnamed feeling. He quite liked it.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick little musing on what I thought they were thinking at the end of the season 8 finale. I’d seen a lot of stuff saying Maggie was wrong and that Jesus was totally out of character, so this was just a little response to that. People are complicated and with Jesus especially, I wanted to try and add a little context to his choice. 
> 
> I really don’t think it’ll turn into a huge civil war between them all, or it fucking shouldn’t at least. And I swear to God, if they turn Maggie especially into a villain because of her totally understandable reaction, then I will not be impressed. 
> 
> So yeah, just a little thing that I knocked up backstage at reaharsals, so I apologise if there’s any errors dotted about. I’m still working on all the prompts by the way! Hope you enjoyed this! Drop me a line about it or the season 8 finale, I love talking to you lot :) xxxx


End file.
